A Vibrant Glimpse

Updated March 27, 2008 12:01 a.m. ET

"A New World: England's First View of America"; at the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Conn.; through June 1; 203-432-2800 or www.yale.edu/ycba

In 1584, Sir Walter Raleigh received a patent from Elizabeth I to finance and settle a colony in the New World. A year later, the artist and gentleman John White set sail with the earliest English expedition to "Virginia," which also included the scientist Thomas Harriot. White's deft drawings and watercolors of the Algonquian Indians and local flora and...